WANTED:

THE SHE-GREMLIN

WANTED FOR: MESSING AROUND WITH BOAT TRANSMISSIONS

19 July 2012


We have been taking a little hiatus to reevaluate our plans.  A deep breath and step back have allowed us to relax a little and get excited about the next step.  Plan B is still in the works, and is for now, going to be kept quiet.  Don't worry though, because as soon as the plan starts to solidify I promise we will share the details!  


I would like to thank all of our readers and followers for ALL of your emails and comments!  You guys are awesome, and it was really cool to receive all of the comments and emails from you regarding the last post.  Although we may be somewhat quiet on the blog for the next week or so while we get our course of action together, we will be back with boat updates in the very near future.  


~C

Freedom

13 July 2012

Enjoying our FIRST morning breeze as dirty cruisers

On September the 9th 2009 we bought what was left of a old forgotten rusted steel sailboat.  As the story goes we sold our soul to create what is now known as Gremlins Hammer.  Today is our day.  This morning we moved her out to the mooring field to pre-stage for the beginning of our return to cruising life tomorrow.  


We will be shifting from refitting to enjoying our floating home.  Thank you for all the kind words and positive support over the last three years.  Stay with us as the adventure is just starting.


-G

Puppet Master

12 July 2012

Crack in the Rigging

It was no secret that our rigging needed some attention.  One of my responsibilities at my paying job is to be a qualified rigger/crane operator.  After a thorough inspection of our rig from top to bottom, we made a punch list and ordered the parts necessary to update our rigging.  We ordered our Sta-loks from Mack Sails and they got here the following day.  Because we had previously bought our sails from them, they gave us a sweet deal.  

Tools needed for the job:  

1. Electric grinder with a cut-of wheel
2. Combination wrenches
3. Screw driver
4. Black Sharpie
5. Small tape measure
6. Face shield
7. Small pair of channel locks or needle nose pliers- something to get the rings out with
8. About 3 beers worth of time

The quickest and cleanest way to cut the 1 x 19 wire rope is with a cut-off wheel.  

After threading the first part of the Stay-lok onto the wire, you have to unlay the outer wires.

Once that is done, you slide the wedge over the core strands and re-lay the outer strands.

After the guts have been installed it then is time to compress the complete terminal end.  Put it back into your turnbuckle and set the proper tension.  We had to add knuckles to our rigging between the turnbuckle and the terminal end because we lost some length due to cutting the ends off.

-G

Spoiled Rotten

 11 July 2012


"Oh my, that Gremlins Hammer has got it made.  They have a freezer, you know."


"WOW they have ice on their boat??"


"YES, isn't that amazing??"


"Oh yes, they are spoiled rotten for sure.  It must be awesome to be them."


Okay okay I realize people are probably not this impressed, and that this is not exactly how the conversations are going behind our backs.  Actually it's probably more like, "Wow they are really excited about having ice... did they just crawl out from under a rock?  Weirdos."  But guess what... WE HAVE ICE!!  And I am stoked!  


A second Engel freezer/fridge was another one of our new boat "toys" that we picked up on the drive home from the Miami airport.  The Engel supplier in Jupiter, Florida has a Scratch and Dent selection, which basically means if there is a scratch in the paint- even a very small, unnoticeable one- the price comes down tremendously.  We bought a 45 quart, although we intended to buy only a 40 quart to match our old one, because the price was so good on the S&D 45 quart.

Our first 40 quart Engel freezer/fridge has been with us since the old boat, and has been put through a lot.  Though cruising, flooding, and aging this little gem has been a trooper and works just as well as it did the first week we had it.  It has been used solely as a fridge for the past few years, and as much as we cook on the boat it was a bit difficult to stock up enough food for more than a couple of days.  Clearly this is not a crisis, but if we ever want to go cruising and not eat dry/canned food the whole time we're underway then a freezer is a great thing to have.

He just got the new freezer/fridge wired and ready to use yesterday.  The new 140W (7.63A) Kyocera solar panels were mounted last week, and the control panel and wiring was finished yesterday morning.  I posted about this briefly in an earlier post, but the solar panels were one of our trip-from-Miami boat "toys" as well.

Solar Panel Control Center

140W Solar Panels

Control Panel

Once the solar panels were set up we were getting enough juice to hook up the second Engel.  I decided to use the new one for the fridge, and the old one as the freezer since the new one is a little bigger.  

The Captain is now happy to be able to have more than one cold Coors Lite in the fridge at a time!  What small luxuries are you excited to have?


~ C

Food Day Tuesday: Turkey Sweet Potato Pie

10 July 2012

A favorite of my hubby's, this pie puts a healthy spin on Shepherd's Pie.  I substitute sweet potatoes (a superfood for type O's) for regular potatoes, and ground turkey for ground beef.  Is it actually as good as the old traditional English dish?  I think so, and I get rave reviews every time from the captain.  If you don't believe me, give it a try... you just may fall in love.  :)

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 pound ground turkey
• sea salt and fresh ground pepper
• 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 pound sweet potatoes, cubed
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, grated
• 2 ribs celery, chopped
• 2 tablespoons butter, divided
• 1 tablespoon flour (I use gluten free brown rice flour and it works just fine.)
• 1 cup chicken stock
• 5 ounces frozen peas
• 1/2 banana
• Few dashes of Worcestershire 
• 1 cup mozzarella cheese (a neutral cheese for type O's)

Directions:

1. Heat oil over high in skillet.
2. Add meat and season with salt, pepper, and poultry seasoning.
3. Boil sweet potatoes in a pot for about 15 minutes, until soft.
4. Add onions and carrots into skillet with turkey.  Next add the celery; cook, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes.
5. Heat 1 tablespoon of butter in a small pot over medium.  Add flour to butter and whisk for about a minute.  
6. Stir in chicken stock, and season with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire.  Let it thicken into a gravy texture. 
7. Once thickened, stir gravy into turkey skillet.
8. Stir in peas, and turn off the heat.
9. Drain potatoes and return to their pot.
10. Add the banana and remaining butter to the potatoes.  Season with salt pepper and cayenne pepper.
11. Mash to combine the ingredients, and adjust seasonings to your liking.
12. Place meat mixture into a baking dish and top with sweet potatoes.  Cover potatoes with mozzarella, and bake at 425 degrees for 5 minutes.

~ C

Thank Goodness For Cold Beer

09 July 2012

No, we didn't fall off the face of the planet.  We haven't posted in a few days because we have been extremely busy putting in a lot of hours into the boat every day.  It has been a tough week, working through a lot of miscellaneous projects and issues around the boat.  Back to that word patience I was recently talking about...  

Anyway, to write about every little thing that we have tackled mentally and around the boat over the past few days would be monotonous for me and boring for you.  In order to keep it short and sweet, I'll quickly sum up what we've been working on and save the whole stories for a time when we find ourselves bored *insert hysterical laughter here*... whatever THAT word means... 

The engine is RUNNING (great news!!!) but is still being tweaked for a few more small issues, which has taken up most of our time and energy.  We worked on the rigging yesterday (I will post about this later on this week), and the nav lights and mast work throughout the week as well.  There have been several other minor things here and there but those are the main projects going on for now.  I promise I will post about how we did each of these projects with pictures once we get them each finished.

~C

Pole Dancing

06 July 2012

On wednesday he climbed to the spreaders while I stayed at the mast base.  We taped twine to the base end of the pre-existing wires, and he pulled the wires up and out through the mast at the spreaders, also pulling the twine through.  We tied off the twine at both ends.

Today our ordered steaming/deck combo light came in at West Marine.  The regular bulbs it came with were immediately replaced by LED lights.  I winched him up to the spreaders in a bosuns chair with a bucket of tools.  We ran the wires by taping the new wire to the twine we had in place from Wednesday.  From the mast base I pulled the new wire down by the twine while he fed me the wire from the top.  Once we had completely pulled the wire through he mounted the light onto the mast.

  

This evening he worked on hooking up the wires to the DC breaker.  A little more mast work is still on the check list for the next day or two.

~ C

Odds and Ins

05 July 2012

This has been a week of little odds and ins.  I'm thinking this is a good sign that biggest projects are behind us.  The KiwiGrip non-skid application was completed as of this morning- it looks and feels great.  

This week he has been all over the engine compartment on both sides, above, behind and in front of our perkins diesel getting it back in good shape.  We ordered a new temperature sender and replaced the old faulty one, flushed the antifreeze, bled the fuel lines, connected the mechanical tachometer, wired the new electric tachometer, installed the raw water alarm, installed the fuel gauge for the new tank, and hooked up the hoses for the fuel tank.

We did a little bit of interior work while we waited on ordered parts to arrive.  In this picture is some bulkhead trim, and the box for our auxiliary DC panel right after it was cut and varnished.  While not pictured (to come in a later post), some other trim work was done around the floor and in the head.

Our GPS and NavPod were mounted onto the pedestal.  The NavPod above the GPS contains our raw water alarm, bilge high water alarm, and our GMI 10.  

On our way back up from Miami a couple weeks ago we made a stop at E-Marine in Ft. Lauderdale.  We picked up two more solar panels for an awesome price- about half of what we paid for the first two.  G had to take off, rearrange, and remount the original two that we bought a year and a half ago to make room for the new ones.  We will have plenty of juice, no doubt.

We have a bunch of mast work to do, including (but not limited to) installing our wind indicator, swapping out the old VHF antenna for a new one, mounting and running new wires for the anchor, steaming, deck, and spreader lights.  Yesterday we began pulling out the old wires (2 out of 4), but a little storm came and rained us out of that job for the day.


After spending the day working hard around the boat, we enjoyed a few cold beers and the firework show put on right in our "back yard."  Johnny got his own beer in hopes that the fireworks wouldn't upset him too much, but it was a lost cause.  He spent the entire thirty minutes growling, barking, howling, and jumping trying to save us all. A big thanks to Johnny for protecting the entire dock from those evil fireworks last night!  Hope that everyone had a fun and safe Fourth celebrating that beautiful thing called freedom.


~ C

Food Day Tuesday: Honey & Whiskey Glazed Salmon

03 July 2012

Since I love sharing and talking about my food and cooking experiences the Captain suggested that I designate a day to post on my favorite recipe of the week.  Hmm.... okay, twist my arm!  You may also notice that I have added a tab to the blog named "Recipes" which will contain a link to every recipe that I post.  For my very first official Food Day Tuesday, I've decided to share another good salmon recipe.  I mix up our meats/proteins throughout the week to get a varied diet, but we eat a LOT of fish since most types of fish are excellent for O blood types.  Jack Daniels is probably not awesome for you, but it DOES taste good!

Ingredients:

• 1 pound salmon
• 3/4 cups Jack Daniels
• 2 tablespoons of honey
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• Fresh ground pepper
• Cooking spray 

Directions:

1. Combine the Jack, honey, ginger, brown sugar, soy sauce, and pepper in a dish and marinate the fish for at least an hour.
2. Spray a grill pan with cooking spray.  Cook salmon for two minutes on each side.

Easy or what?  While I marinated the salmon, I grated up a carrot, some fresh ginger, and a cucumber all together and spread it out over a spinach and baby spring mix.  I made a light salad dressing with extra virgin olive oil, a quarter teaspoon of ground ginger and a quarter teaspoon of ground turmeric.  Once the salmon was cooked I tossed it on top of the salad and dinner was served!

Enjoy!  

~C

Today's Post Brought to You by the Letter...

02 July 2012

P

P is for PATIENCE

G cutting wood for our bulkhead trim work

Today began with day number 3 of non-skid application.  After lunch we worked on trim and finish work in the head, galley, and chart table areas (I'm going to wait until all of our finish work is complete to  post any of those pictures!).  During the course of today's work a very thick layer of saw dust and grinding/sanding dust was spread across the entire galley, saloon table, settees, book shelves, companionway, head, pantry, and engine room.  There I was, right behind the mess with a shop-vac, dust pan, and fox tail cleaning up.  Finally when everything was clean, there he came walking in through the companionway saying "Honey... I know you just cleaned up but I have another big mess to make."  At this point, 3-years-ago-me would have been very frustrated and perhaps even irritated at the situation.  But today-me just smiled and said "Okay Honey, don't worry... it is a boat.  I'll get the shop-vac back out."

While I was cleaning up the mess for the second time, I thought a lot about patience.  You do not buy a sailboat or make big plans to go cruising if you do not have patience.  Well, perhaps you do, but that has to mean that you are legally insane.  If you lack patience, AND you are also crazy enough to buy a boat- especially a steel boat- then you will either be forced to learn patience very quickly, or you will sell your boat for whatever the first guy has in his pocket shortly after you had a major break down over the realization that you just dumped every penny, every free minute, and every drop of sweat you had into "that stupid boat."

That being said... from time to time I start getting overwhelmed with all the hundreds of projects, big and small, that we have left to do.  I forget to take each day and each project one at a time, and begin thinking about the next twenty projects rather than the one at hand.  I also have to admit that having something unplanned happen around the boat (i.e. something quits working, a horrid mystery smell rises up from the bilge, a new rust spot pops up in an incredibly hard-to-reach area, etc) forcing us to take a detour to immediately attend the unexpected issue before moving on to today's to-do list can get me a bit frustrated as well.  Clutter, mess, things out of place, and sanding/grinding dust all over the galley is also a tad hard to be excited about.  When it's a mess I cannot hide from my hubby that it does not make me happy.

However, the good news is that I am quickly getting much better with my level of patience.  I love our boat, and I can't wait to get her cruising.  She may not be perfectly clean, organized, and in mint condition, but I have yet to see any home that is!  Through the course of my quest for boat patience, I have learned a few things...

1. A lot, if not most of the time, a boat is going to be a mess, and screwdrivers and work dust are going to find their way into the galley several times daily.
2. Every boat is going to always be a work-in-progress, no matter how awesome, fancy, new, beautiful, or perfect it seems to the untrained eye.  
3. Maintenance is just a fact of boat life.  It is a constant battle to keep a boat up, but is a labor of love if you really do love your boat.  
4. Be patient.  Yes, there are tons of other things that need tweaking, fixing, rearranging, painting, sanding, cleaning, tightening, and oiling, but you can only do one thing at a time. 

So relax, man!  Patience makes life easier... especially on a project boat.

~ C

Non-Skid Marks

01 July 2012

We have begun the application of KiwiGrip on the deck.  After doing the research, asking advice, watching tutorials, reading reviews, and analyzing the instructions, we finally got to work on it.  The above tools were what we used to get the job done: frogtape paint tape, a "loopy goopy" roller, a putty knife, a notched spreader, paint brushes just in case, and of course one gallon of white KiwiGrip.

Step 1: 

Wash boat deck

Step 2: 

Towel dry deck

Step 3:

Tape up sections to be painted with non-skid

Step 4:

Round corners to make a smooth edge

G came up with a great, easy way to do this.  We took a quarter and outlined a semi-circle on a strip of painter's tape, and then we cut out the semi-circle.  We then put the tape down to create a round corner, making every corner uniform.

The instructions say to get a helper if you are tackling a large area... This was our volunteer...

Step 5:

Goop the paint on with small putty knife.  

Step 6:

Use notched spreader to evenly distribute the paint. 

This was a tip from the guy who sold us the gallon.  We recommend using this technique before rolling with the ol' loopy goopy because it seems to make it a lot easier to roll.

Step 7:

Use loopy goopy roller to roll over the paint to create the rough texture.

I figured out that it creates a more even texture to go against the lines made by the notches in the spreader.

Step 8:

Pull up paint tape immediately.

We learned the hard way that "Immediately" does in fact mean... IMMEDIATELY!  If you don't do it immediately it will pull up the paint and/or dissolve into the paint and become stuck.

Step 9:

Allow to set up and dry.  KiwiGrip will be dry to the touch within 1-4 hours, but can take up to 14 days to fully cure.

We got a little pissy on day one because we didn't take the "can take up to 14 days to fully cure" part seriously.  A small section of the paint was easily pulled up from the deck and we readily blamed the Kiwi Grip for not sticking like it should, especially for $100 a gallon.  When we remembered reading that little 14-day-cure statement we relaxed a bit.  On day two, we sanded the sections to be painted, even though we were instructed that sanding was only necessary if the deck paint was less than a year old.  Can't hurt to be on the safe side, right?

This is what the texture looks like when painted on the boat.  So far, so good...

~ C

Veggie & Goat Cheese Pasta

01 July 2012

It is HOT here in central Florida right now, and I thought a fresh veggie pasta would be nice and refreshing for dinner last night.  I gathered a bunch of veggies from the produce stand here in town and some mint from my own onboard herb garden.

It took about a half hour to prepare, chop, and cut the ingredients.

Brown rice spiral pasta (gluten free) is a great alternative to use in place of regular white pasta.  They have more flavor, and are much healthier.

The best part is that it made an awesome cold pasta salad for lunch  in the middle of a very warm Sunday!

Want to try it yourself?

Ingredients:

• 12 ounces brown rice spiral pasta
• 1/2 pound sugar snap peas
• 2 medium shredded carrots
• 1 yellow bell pepper
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes
• 1/2 cup roughly chopped fresh mint
• 4 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Cook pasta according to label in a big pot.
2. Add peas, carrots, and bell pepper to boiling water during the last two minutes of cooking the pasta.
3. Reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking water.  Drain pasta and veggies and return them to the pot.
4. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add garlic and cook for 30 - 60 seconds.  
5. Add tomatoes and salt and cook until tomatoes begin to wilt.
6. Add reserved water to tomato mix and simmer  for about a minute or two.  Pour the tomato mix into the pot with pasta and veggies. 
7. Add mint and half of the goat cheese and toss all the ingredients together.
8. Season with salt to taste and top with remaining goat cheese and drizzle with a little olive oil.

~C

We Got Gas

30 June 2012

Here is the long awaited final shot of the new double tank propane box mounted on the port side of the aft rail.  I know we promised this last week, but we've been busy taking advantage of the awesome weather the past few days.

These are our two fiberglass propane tanks.  The box had to be built to fit both the main tank and the spare tank to be able to get them both out of the sun and the cockpit.  G took the measurements and got to work building the frame.

Once the frame was built, he measured for the sides and lid.  We cut and built the box, and afterwards we glassed it in with West System (pictures for the glass work were not taken, as it was a little too messy to take pictures).

We sanded the box smooth, and painted on two coats of primer, and three coats of top coat, sanding in between coats.

We used our new dinghy lifts (more on those to come) to hold the box in place while we mounted it to the aft rail.  

And voila, we have our new propane box!

~ C

Cockpit Table

29 June 2012

This is our new teak cockpit table, oiled and mounted!  We got a great deal on the table at Marine Connection Liquidators in Fort Pierce, Florida on our way back up from Miami.  It is a great fit, and we have enjoyed meals from it every chance we have had in the past week.  The cup and binoculars holder shelf is really handy too.

~C

I think I'm Gonna Hurl...

28 June 2012

We finally woke up to beautiful weather, just as we were promised by the weather forecasters.  This is AWESOME news because we were able to get a lot done around the boat today.  Unfortunately there was an unexpected side job that had to be tackled first thing after breakfast.  I heard our bilge pump start pumping water out as I was washing dishes, and quickly realized that the sump pump was not kicking on, and therefore overflowing dirty dish water down to the bilge.  Keeping in mind that Murphy (our gremlin) has been known to flip the switch for the sump pump in the past, I immediately checked the panel.  The panel light for the sump was still on, so I eliminated that possibility.  I pulled up the floor board over the pump to investigate the situation further, and much to my dismay our sump pump was completely disgusting.  To say "filthy" simply does not cut it.  The layer of black and snot-colored slime all through the filter and the entire pump box was honestly... well, completely disgusting.  Hmm... I guess I found the problem.

I think I'm gonna HURL

I nearly lost my cookies at the mere sight of it, and I hadn't even gotten down in there to start cleaning it yet.  To be really honest, I'm almost embarrassed to even show the condition that I found it in.  How does this even happen??  Ahh... the joys of being a boat owner...

I never figured out what in the world managed to get into that little box and create such havoc, but I hope to never see it again.  

More regular cleanings are definitely in order, because I NEVER, EVER want to see, smell, or touch this stuff again.  

I will spare you the gruesome details on what all it took to get it clean again, or how the mystery black slime splashed up in my face, or how the smell made me gag the entire time; all I will tell is that a couple of hours later we had a spic n' span sump pump!

The good news is that we did get a lot done today, but I will save that for the Captain's post that is soon to come.  Stay tuned...


~ C